# Examples of mathematical coincidences that had great influence on other domains [closed]

I am looking for natural coincidences in math that had an unexpected but significant influence (positive or negative) in shaping up further developments in math or in other domains.

For example: One fascinating coincidence is the one related to the fractional powers that basically enabled equal temperament and the development of modern music as we know it: See the top answers for Mathematical difference between white and black notes in a piano.

A less spectacular example is $2^{10} \approx 1000$, which enabled convenient measurement of the amount of data in KB, MB, GB, etc.

Are there other examples?

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I'm not convinced the examples you cite are ‘natural’. In fact, I feel that if something is a ‘coincidence’, it cannot possibly be ‘natural’. This feels more like numerology than mathematics. I am voting to close, but I note that there are already 2 votes to close as ‘not a real question’. –  Zhen Lin Aug 5 '11 at 10:13
I think this is a valid question, asking for more examples where a "lucky" numerical situation had an influence (e.g. simplified a problem in some other domain). –  Adrian Aug 5 '11 at 16:08
I think this question should have been closed as a duplicate of math.stackexchange.com/questions/41256/…. Does it make sense to reopen it in order to do that? –  joriki Aug 5 '11 at 16:17
Many priority disputes in mathematics have occurred because different researchers were working on the same mathematical ideas at the same time but were unaware of each others work. Two famous such disputes were those between Newton and Liebniz and between Hamming and Golay. –  Joseph Malkevitch Aug 5 '11 at 20:01
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## closed as not a real question by ShreevatsaR, Pete L. Clark, Zhen Lin, Raskolnikov, Asaf KaragilaAug 5 '11 at 12:03

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